Bibliometric Performance and Future Relevance of Virtual Manufacturing Technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Virtual manufacturing (VM) technology emerged in the 1980s as a revolutionary strategy to optimize and streamline the entire product/service manufacturing lifecycle. However, over the years, its popularity appears to have waned. Further, the advent of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) or Industry 4.0 brings with it other integrated digital technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, and digital twin (DT), among others. DT offers functions like VM plus other benefits, including intelligent manufacturing, to revolutionize future manufacturing operations activities and predictive capability using real-time data. This paper employs bibliographic metadata from publications indexed on SCOPUS to evaluate the recent trends in VM research and develop predictive models to forecast VM’s future trajectory and relevance in 4IR. The results of the bibliometric evaluation of VM-related scientific literature publications show a rapidly declining research productivity and highlight an exponential decline from the mid-2000s. This period of VM publication decline coincides with the advent of 4IR and DT technology, which are trending. The results of the predictive analytics using the quadratic regression model created in this study to forecast the future relevance of VM in the 4IR era suggest that VM publications show a similar conclusion. VM research output increased until 2009 and then started decreasing exponentially. The quadratic model implies an exponential decrease in yearly VM publications. Future works can evaluate DT and VM research trends from the last two decades.

The Role of Virtual Reality Simulation in Manufacturing in Industry 4.0

“…Figure 1 shows that the SCP produced in the four years of the COVID-19 outbreak (2020-2023) makes up over 40% (316 out of 776) of the total SCP. This trend has been observed in several studies across many disciplines, confirming increased SCP and adoption of digital technologies, including virtual reality and simulation platforms [3,18,34]. The results also show that, as the COVID-19 pandemic ceded, the SCP started to decline (e.g., 2023: Figure 1), indicating the possible impact of COVID-19 on increased adoption of VRSIM technology in manufacturing.…”

“…The table also shows citations earned and the corresponding network strengths of journal articles and proceedings papers on manufacturing VRSIM based on the clusters. The result shows that the publications on manufacturing VRSIM appeared in sources across multidisciplinary but related disciplines, including manufacturing, operations and production, industrial engineering, operations research, computer science, and information systems, corroborating the nature of manufacturing problems and the integrated technologies in the 4IR [18].…”

“…The results show a strong research productivity of manufacturing VRSIM, although the first five years (2010 to 2014) remained flat, with SCP per year ranging between 33 and 36, an average of 34 per year). As the popularity of 4IR gained momentum, the SCP recorded further increases from 49 in 2017 to 70 in 2018 and peaked in 2022 at 98, an increase which in part can be attributed to increased research productivity, especially in the period of COVID-19 [18,44]. Figure 1 shows that the SCP produced in the four years of the COVID-19 outbreak (2020-2023) makes up over 40% (316 out of 776) of the total SCP.…”

“…Other areas where manufacturing VRSIM plays essential roles include innovative and efficient product design that shortens the time to market [35,64,65]. Other studies examine VRSIM in virtual manufacturing systems, process engineering, and optimization of operations activities to enhance efficiency and improve manufacturing decisions [18,66,67]. Section 4.4 offers further analysis and identifies such keywords.…”

“…As the global manufacturing landscape continues to experience profound transformation in the 4IR, VRSIM plays significant roles in virtual product design, digital twin and predictive maintenance, and efficient and adaptive manufacturing ecosystem [1,5,17,18]. This study examines the role of virtual reality simulation in manufacturing in Industry 4.0 utilizing based on the science mapping/bibliometric analysis methodology.…”